Broadway Blessing 25th Anniversary Celebration

 

'Kinky Boots' returns, as fabulous as ever

 

     The Kinky Boots revival at Stage 42 is every bit as fun as the original 2013 Broadway hit and Callum Francis’s performance as sassy drag queen Lola is right up there with Billy Porter’s Tony Award-winning portrayal.  With a 25-person cast, it’s a delight from beginning to end.

     Directed and choreographed once again by Jerry Mitchell, the simple story of a dying shoe factory in Northampton, England that is revived after its owner discovers a colorful niche market is never overwhelmed by the high energy singing and dancing that surround it.  The story belongs to Lola and Charlie (Christian Douglas), the heir to Price and Son Shoes, who form an unexpected partnership that changes both their lives.  We are entertained royally with each song and dance number but these two characters come off as real and are not lost.  We care about them, as we do Lauren, a young factory worker endearingly played by Danielle Hope, and the other factory workers and Lola’s Angels, the six backup singers and dancers who make up her cabaret act.  David Rockwell’s minimalist sets contribute to keeping the focus on the story. 

     The original Broadway show, with music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper and book by Harvey Fierstein, won the Tony for best new musical.  It was inspired by the 2005 British movie, which it follows closely.  The inspiration for the movie was a documentary about the death of factories making conservative dress shoes for men as society was becoming more and more informal.  One factory reinvented itself by catering to men who wanted women’s shoe styles but with a sturdiness that would support a man’s body.  The movie creators then invented the Lola/Charlie story.  A musical was a natural next step.

     The show begins with Charlie’s father (Ryan Halsaver) indoctrinating his son in the family business, which was established in 1890.  The full company backs this up in “The Most Beautiful Thing,” which in Mr. Price’s eyes is a shoe.

     But adult Charlie has other things in mind.  Much to his father’s dismay, he moves to London with his fiancé, Nicola (Brianna Stoute), to work in marketing.  He isn’t gone long before he receives the call that his father has died and he returns to run the factory so the employees, whom he has known all his life and considers to be friends, won’t lose their jobs.

     One evening, when he has gone back to London to see Nicola, he has a chance encounter with Lola and ends up in her dressing room where she laments that she has broken the heel of yet another pair of thigh-high boots.  Charlie tries to fix it before returning to Northampton to begin what have become inevitable lays offs.  

     Lauren, though, refuses to see closing the factory as an option.  She tells Charlie to find a new market and the lightbulb goes off in his head as he thinks of Lola and all of the other Lolas out there, men who for whatever reason want to wear women’s shoe styles.  He arranges to meet Lola in London to take her foot measurements, promising to return with the boots because he doesn’t want her coming to the factory.  She picks up on this, telling him “I have a terrible habit of doing exactly the opposite of what people ask.”  Her arrival, in a short blue dress with matching blue booties and hat, is a hoot.  Gregg Barnes’s costumes are great all around but spectacular for Lola.  The factory workers have never seen anyone like Lola. 

     Charlie proudly shows her a burgundy boot — after she had demanded red — with a thick heel.  She turns full drama queen, telling him “burgundy is the color of hot water bottles; red is the color of sex.”  She makes this clear in the hilarious “Sex is in the Heel” number, supported by her Angels and the ensemble.  Charlie is convinced, saying they will make "two and a half feet of tubular sex." 

     Determined to make it work, Charlie asks her to stay for three weeks, which horrifies her because she “abandoned the provinces years ago.”  When Charlie says he will make her the designer and they will work in partnership, she’s in and they go about creating boots with the goal of taking them to the upcoming Milan shoe exhibition. 

     The journey to Milan is threaten after Charlie’s harsh words to Lola shatters their relationship but, rest assured, we’ll get to that great closing number, “Raise You Up/Just Be,” with the full company in thigh-high shiny red boots singing and dancing up a storm that will send you out of the theatre in high spirits. 

     Two other numbers that stand out for me are “Step One” and “I’m Not My Father’s Son.”  In “Step” we see Charlie starting to believe in his new venture and enthusiastically singing: “I may be facing the impossible/I may be chasing after miracles./And there may be the steepest/mountain to overcome./But this is step one.

     “It’s not just a factory./This is my family/No one’s gonna shut us down.  Not while Charlie Price is around.”

     “My Father’s Son” is moving.  Lola, dressed in men’s clothes to start her designer job at the factory, tells Charlie that her father was a boxer who hated his son for being gay and trained him as a boxer to try to change him before refusing to have anything to do with him, not even when he was dying of lung cancer.  “The best part of me/is what he wouldn’t see,” she sings.

     “So I jumped in my dreams/and found an escape./Maybe I went to extremes/of leather and lace./But the world seemed brighter/six inches off the ground/and the air seemed lighter./I was profound/And I felt so proud/just to live out loud.”

     Charlie joins him at the end: “I’m not my father’s son/I’m not the image of what he dreamed of . . . “

     Then Lola extends her hand to shake and sings: “We’re the same, Charlie boy/You and me.  Charlie from Northampton, meet Simon from Clacton.”  To which Charlie replies: “Let’s make boots!”  And they shake.

     It’s a credit to Mitchell that such a tender moment is preserved.  The movie had tender moments but I’ve seen such scenes destroyed in other musicals, Ghost: The Musical and Bullets Over Broadway come to mind, when the choreographer suffocated them in high-charged dance numbers that ruined all sentiment. 

     The original Kinky Boots ran for six years, closing as recently as April 2019.  I’m happy we didn’t have to wait long for its return. 

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof revival will leave you asking Why?

 

     No director’s note is included in the Playbill for the Ruth Stage revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which opened last night at Theatre at St. Clement’s.  This is unfortunate because I would love to know Joe Rosario’s thinking behind his choices.  I sat there wondering over and over, Why?

     My biggest and most significant question is why he set this play about the Deep South in the 1950s in the present.  The heart of the play is about Brick’s anguish over his homosexuality and his love for his high school friend, Skipper, which drives him to drink and away from his wife, Maggie.  This is 2022.  Brick and Skipper could be married and living happily ever after.  They could even have their union blessed in many religious traditions.  No guilt.  No alcoholism.  No Maggie.  No story and no moving Tennessee Williams play.

     Another major question is why was Sonoya Mizuno cast as Maggie.  She’s skinny and flat-chested and has zero sex appeal.  We checked the program after the first act and read that she was a ballet dancer before “making the transition to acting.”  That explains the body, which is a beautiful dancer’s body.  It also says this is her New York City stage acting debut.  That could account for her unrecognizable Maggie, with a southern accent that left Williams’ witty and highly charged dialogue incomprehensible a great deal of the time.  No dialect coach is mentioned in the program.  That would have been money well spent for all of the actors.  (Maybe there actually was one who is uncredited in the bios.  The playwright is also not listed in the bios.  Did they forget about him?  He did, after all, win a Pulitzer Prize for the play in 1955.) 

     Another question is why present the show with such a low rent appearance.  Brick (Matt de Rogatis) has tattoos all over his arms and onto his chest.  With her big blond hair, grosely over made-up face and gaudy jewelry, Big Mama (Alison Fraser) looks like Ivana Trump resurrected.  Matthew Imhoff’s set could be depicting a trailer park or cheap motel room.  And Xandra Smith’s costumes look straight out of Target.  Instead of slinking around in a classic white slip like the one made famous by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1958 movie version of Cat, Mizuno gallops about in an ugly gray glorified teddy.  I was fortunate to see Elizabeth Ashley as Maggie in the 1974 Broadway revival.  What a contrast. She filled that white slip beautifully too.

     The Pollitts are supposed to be wealthy.  Big Daddy (Christian Jules Le Blanc) is a crude, self-made man but the rest of his family, with the exception of Brick, are climbers.  They might be tacky underneath but they should be displaying their wealth on their Mississippi estate. 

     I wonder what Williams would think of this interpretation of the play that was his favorite.  Or his distant cousin the Rev. Sidney Lanier who, as the rector of St. Clement’s Episcopal Church, gutted the sanctuary in 1963 and build an Off-Broadway theatre.  The parish and theatre continue to share the building on West 46th Street.  I don’t think either would be pleased. 

A new musical for children -- warmly dressed children

 

     An unhappy 17-year-old girl finds refuge in reading until one book, a fairytale, changes her life in Between the Lines, the new children’s musical that opened last night at the Tony Kiser Theater.  The two stories collide in the magical way children love but the charm didn’t extend to this adult, or my guest who left at intermission.

     We were in the minority in this regard at Friday’s preview performance.  Few children were there, probably because with an 8 p.m. curtain for a show that runs two hours and 20 minutes, with a long intermission, it would be a late night out for little ones.  The theatre was filled with adults who loved the show from beginning to end, laughing and voicing their enthusiasm throughout, so much so that I wondered if the audience had been packed with family and friends of the cast.  Just as likely, though, they were fans of Jodi Picoult, the best-selling chick-lit author whose book Between the Lines, written with her daughter, Samatha Van Leer, inspired the musical.  

     That appreciative crowd didn’t seem to mind that every character in the real-life plot was stereotypical, something that is just fine with children because they love familiarity.  And they obviously didn’t find the fairytale plot overdone and tedious, as I did.  

     Jeff Calhoun directs the cast of 10.  Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson wrote the music and lyrics for the 20 songs and Timothy Allen McDonald wrote the book.

     Arielle Jacobs is winning in the lead role of Delilah, who has moved with her mother (Julia Murney) to, as the program says, "the kind of town 17 year olds dream of escaping.”  Her world was upended after her father left her mother for a young yoga teacher.  Now her mother cleans the houses of her classmates and goes to school at night, leaving Delilah to fend for herself.  Her days are rough too.  Having transferred into a new school as a junior, she is bullied by the mean girl, Allie (understudy Aubrey Matalon performing for Hillary Fisher) and her friends.  To escape her loneliness Delilah crawls out onto her roof at night to read.

     “Between the lines, there’s a place I feel free,” she sings.  “That’s where I want to go.”

     One night, having already read Dostoevsky, comic books and The Great Gatsby, which she dismisses as “a telenovela for the 1 percent,” Delilah opens a picture book she brought home from the school library and is smitten by the handsome Prince Oliver (Jake David Smith).  He soon speaks to her from the page and they develop a relationship.  Before long, he steps into her world and, eventually, she falls into his. 

     This is the kind of plot young children like but for me, other than Delilah the only interesting character is Jules (Wren Rivera), the nonbinary student who befriends her.  They always have a sharp comment.  “If Allie was on fire and I had a glass of water, I’d drink it,” they say.  And, “Acting like a dick won’t make yours any bigger.”  Unfortunately their role is minimal.  (Gender and sexuality consultant, Celeste Lecesne). 

     Having a nonbinary character was one of the few elements that made this show seem even remotely contemporary.  Picoult’s and Van Leer’s hardcover book was published a decade ago, but much of the play’s dialogue sounds like 1990s Oprah show commentary.  When Delilah is told to “live the story you want if it’s not the story you’re in,” the audience let out the sound of a collective Wow, as if hearing a profound pronouncement.  

     Tobin Ost’s set serves the story well.  Packed bookcases on either side disappear into the heights beyond view and smaller shelves frame a wall where the storybook projections appear.  (Projection designer, Caite Hevner).  A small portion of the floor lifts on a slant to create Delilah’s rooftop getaway and minimal bedroom, living room and school furniture slide on as needed.  

     Gregg Barnes has created costumes ranging from standard high school casual to colorful storybook attire and, loveliest of all, the fairytale gown for Delilah’s transformation.  Neat costume change.   

     Paul McGill’s choreography is unimaginative, although the tap dancing dog (Will Burton) is cute.

     Between the Lines had its world premiere at Kansas City Rep where it broke box office records in the fall of 2017.   A sold-out concert version was performed at 92Y in Manhattan in January 2018.

     A word of warning for all of you who plan to see this show, wear long pants and take a jacket.  The theatre was freezing Friday night.  I thought of the few little girls I saw earlier going into the theatre in their spaghetti strap dresses, their legs bare, and I wondered how many were taken home at intermission.  Their parents should have asked for a refund.  It could almost have been considered a form of child abuse to make them stay there all that time. 

     

'Epiphany' could use an epiphany

 

     Visually, Epiphany, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, is an A+.   Unfortunately Brian Watkins’ play is not.  Obscure is a word I would use.  That might be one of my kindest descriptions.

     John Lee Beatty’s set readied me to get into the show, at least I thought it did.  The Playbill describes the setting as a “very old house, on the banks of a large river, just north of a big city.”  Beatty captured this through wood paneled walls, a fireplace with a comfy fire, slightly worn Oriental rugs, an upright piano, side tables holding glasses and candles, a well-stocked bar cart and stairs going to the dark, unseen upstairs and the unseen front door downstairs.  

     Floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides reveal wooded surroundings and snow falling steadily.  Wind is heard and the curtains blow.  Isabella Byrd’s lighting creates that peaceful white glow that fills the sky when it snows.  

     Peaceful, though, doesn’t follow into the play, which is directed by Tyne Rafaeli.  Morkan (Marylouise Burke), an elderly woman about 4’ 10” (if that) is nervously awaiting guests for her Epiphany party, although she doesn’t know what the feast of Epiphany is and, it will come out, neither do her guests.  The time is described as “now, for the most part” but these people must not have heard of Google.  Didn’t they have any curiosity about what kind of party they were going to?

     Morkan has recruited Loren (Colby Minifie), a woman in her 20s, to help.  Both are in perpetual motion, with Loren running down the stairs every time the doorbell rings.  Morkan can hardly wait for Gabriel, her nephew, to get there, and as the guests begin arriving, we learn they feel the same way.  This does create an element of suspense but that feeling ends in disappointment. 

     The guests, who don’t know each other, start a wide variety of pretentious conversations that they don’t finish, which is OK because they aren’t interesting.  Their attention is never far from the eagerly anticipated Gabriel, but when the doorbell rings for the final time and they expect he has arrived at last, a mysterious woman (Carmen Zilles) enters and introduces herself a Aran, Gabriel’s partner.  She tells them Gabriel is suffering from depression and won’t be coming.  

     Aran brings another of the lovely visual elements of the show, her simple but dramatic outfit — full, flowing winter white pants with a winter white long knit jacket and a torso-filling burgundy scarf (costumes by Montana Levi Blanco).  She has a bit of an ethereal air and offers pseudo-philosophical comments. 

     The group eventually puts the tables together for their roasted goose dinner.  They light all of the candles and the effect is beautiful.  Morkan soon spoils this atmosphere, though, with a shocking confession.  The final scene is even more bizarre.  If there’s an epiphany in Epiphany I never found it.

     All of the cast members do the best with what they’ve been given.  Completing the cast are: C.J. Wilson, as a teacher who drinks too much; Heather Burns, a pianist; Francois Battiste, a lawyer; Omar Metwally, a psychiatrist; David Ryan Smith, his husband and Jonathan Hadary, an old friend of Morkan. 

     The show runs two hours without an intermission, which is wise because I’m sure quite a few people would have headed out the door.  As it was, a large number of seats were empty at the start.  That could be attributed to summer, or it could be word of mouth. 

'Queen' presents the kind of moral dilemmas found in Ibsen and Miller

      Queen, my first show of the new season, was a delight.    Playwright Madhuri Shekar hits all the right notes with her plot, character development and dialogue.  She turns a story about scientific research into an involving ethical discourse, presented within a well-paced one hour and 45 minutes, at the A.R.T./New York Mezzanine Theatre.

     Aneesha Kudtarkar seamlessly directs the excellent cast of four so I felt I was in the lab with these people, watching the drama unfold.  I liked the two main characters, Sanam Shah (Avanthika Srinivasan, right in photo) and Ariel Spiegel (Stephanie Janssen, left), Ph.D. candidates at the University of California Santa Cruz who have spent six years researching what has been killing an alarming number of honey bees.  They are ready to name pesticides produced by The Monsanto Company, an agrochemical manufacturer, as the culprit.  They’re at the final stage of their findings, which are scheduled to be published in a cover story for Nature, the most respected scientific journal in the country.  They will be able to write their own tickets after graduation.

     Until Sanam’s final data negates all of their work until then and they don’t have the result they had planned to present.   These two close friends, their professor who heads the project, Dr. Philip Hays (Ben Livingston), and Sanam’s new boyfriend, Arvind Patel (Keshav Moodliar), face the moral decision of what to do with this damning new information.  

    This is the kind of ethical dilemma I’ve always enjoyed in the plays of Ibsen and Miller.  As performed by these actors, the characters are never preachy or shrill.  They are believable people with a lot at stake.

     A subplot to the academic research story is the relationship between Sanam and Arvind, a Wall Street analyst she meets on a blind date arranged by her parents in India who want her to settle down with a successful Indian man.  They are clearly mismatched as she sits looking bored and he talks nonstop.  Finally, too distracted by her research findings, she says she’s going to the lab and, on impulse, invites him back to look at her calculations.  He’s eager, thinking that’s some kind of code for a sexual encounter but she’s only interested in his analyst’s brain because her results are no longer significant.

     “If they’re not significant, we have nothing,” she says. 

     He’s unconcerned, telling her, “Just oversample the old data.  They’re not gonna notice.” 

     That’s unacceptable to her so he gives it some thought.

     “So, if you’ve been getting significant results all this time, until, just now . . . sounds like . . . well, sounds like the threshold effect.”  

     He stands and points at her.

     “Aha!  You were biased.”

     Who wouldn’t be tempted to fudge a bit when the work of six years and all the expected glory it was to produce are threatened?  

     The production focuses completely on the characters and story.  Scenic designer Junghyun Georgia Lee wisely keeps the sets to a minimum, little more than lab tables forming a honeycomb that are reconfigured when needed.  Yuki Nakase Link’s lighting greatly enhances the atmosphere with its fluorescent vibe. 

     This inaugural production of the NAATCO National Partnership Project (NNPP) comes to New York City directly from Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT.  NNPP establishes rigorous relationships with theatres around the country to ingrain strategies for the inclusion of Asian American theatre artists, technicians and administrators. 

     I hope Queen will move to one of the city’s major Off-Broadway theatres, with this cast.  It’s worthy of a step up. 

Foundation connects faith and the arts

 

     With the goal of exploring how art engages with religious traditions through a variety of disciplines and artistic practices, two long-time colleagues in the arts world have put years of discussion into action, forming the Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts to offer the contemporary art world a more welcoming environment for artistic expressions of faith.

     “We’re imagining a kind of hub on a very small scale but significant enough for deep conversations to emerge and relationships to be built,” said Leeza Ahmady, director of programs for the foundation, which was incorporated in New York City last year. “We both have deep roots and connections to the arts world.”

     Her partner in this venture is Tyler Rollins, who closed his art gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in late 2020 to devote himself to the effort as executive director. 

     “This kind of project is not a sidebar,” Rollins said.  “It really requires full-time dedication.” 

     The two discussed their plans during an hour-plus Zoom interview in early March; he from Charleston, SC, where he lives much of the time, and she from the foundation’s headquarters in Manhattan’s Sugar Hill neighborhood in Harlem.

     The foundation will offer residencies, gatherings, exhibitions and six-month fellowships for scholars and art managers to gain practical experience in administration, graphic design, fundraising and programming. 

     It held its first event Nov. 1 in Charleston.  Reflections on Contemporary Art and Faith: An Inspiring, Poetic and Discursive Evening featured a panel discussion and Q&A.  Rollins and Ahmady shared their personal and professional experience and their plans for the foundation.  

     They were joined by Amina Ahmed, a New York, London and Tehran-based artist, who gave an artist talk entitled Standing Under Our Ancestors: Understanding Our Mother, revolving around the revered role of Mary in Islam.   Elijah Siegler, a professor of religious studies and film scholar at the College of Charleston, facilitated the discussion and moderated the Q&A.  The event was hosted by The College of Charleston Religious Studies Department. 

     Close to 45 people attended the free event.  Intended as an intimate gathering, it attracted a mixed group of artists, religious studies and art students, members of various faith organizations, as well as university staff and educators.  A video of the program will be posted when FSA launches its website later this spring.   

     “We had overwhelmingly positive feedback from people who said it’s such a needed organization,” Rollins said.  “That was very affirming, that there would be immediate resonance in terms of what we’re trying to do.”

     They are now gearing up for a larger event in Charleston to be held in May.  Details will be available on the foundations’ website, fsa.art. 

     The foundation will welcome a new round of young religious scholars into its fellowship program this spring.  Last May two fellows, one in curatorial experience and the other in graphic design, spent six months, two days a week, learning from Rollins and Ahmady.

     “They got their hands into establishing a foundation, seeing the birth of a new venture,” Ahmady said. “They can use that as a stepping stone to a real position.” 

     The foundation will also offer a fully funded residency program with juried selection, along side less structured residency retreats for individuals and small groups.  Based in downtown Charleston, FSA’s residency program will be offered to visual artists, writers and composers exploring themes of religiosity and spirituality in their work. Theologians, philosophers and spiritual leaders will be invited to interact with the resident artists and arts professionals in the hopes of prompting possible collaboration, insightful exchanges and facilitation of connections between the fields of art and spirituality.  Residents’ three- to six-week stays include travel, room and board, food, and private studio and workspace. 

     The foundation’s founders have much to offer.  Rollins, 53, has more than 20 years of experience in New York City’s contemporary art world, gaining an international reputation as a leading advocate for some of the most compelling artists from the Asia Pacific region.  In 2008 he opened a public gallery space, Tyler Rollins Fine Art, with a program focusing on internationally active mid-career artists from Southeast Asia.  The gallery participated in some of the world’s top art fairs.

     Ahmady, who is in her late 40s, directed New York’s acclaimed Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW), the premier United States platform for leading museums and galleries dedicated to showcasing both reputable and lesser-known artists and dialogues from across all regions of Asia, including the Middle East.  She began this work in 2005 and continued until leaving to work full time for the foundation.

     Faith is important to both founders.  Rollins, who grew up in a staunch Presbyterian family in Durham, NC, now worships at the Episcopal Grace Church Cathedral in Charleston.  Ahmady, who was born in Afghanistan, grew up in a devout Muslim family and continues as a practicing Muslim. 

     Through their experience both founders observed a lack of support for artists of faith or spiritual leanings in the contemporary art world, even though they acknowledge there is nothing novel in the idea of linking spirituality and art.  

     “They’ve always been connected,” Ahmady says.  “Our job is to uncover what might have been going on that hasn’t been framed.  Modernity and secularism may have caused a seeming disconnect.  Our conversations could tap into that and bring it to light.

     “It’s a two-way street.  The institutional art world can benefit from dialogue with faith communities and faith communities can be incredibly enriched by creative people.  We can have a stream flowing both ways in terms of inspiration.”

     Rollins thinks the pandemic has fostered people’s appreciation for a spiritual connection to the arts.

    “It’s something we’ve been thinking about for many years, conjoining faith and spirituality, for artists to have a space to kind of flourish in this nexus between the two,” he said.  “There’s a kind of secular model of inspiration and the sense of connection with faith traditions has been a bit sidelined in recent decades.  Spirituality is hardly ever addressed as the channel through which all creativity flows.  Certain sectors of our culture have sort of given up on each other.  We’re hoping to be a force for positive change.”